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I lost on Jeopardy!...baby

Jason Werling

Mar 23, 2010

I can't get that song out of my head since attending Drew Scheeler's watch party for his appearance on Jeopardy's Teen Tournament last night. Some of you might think I am talking about the Greg Kihn song "Jeopardy" in the early 80's, but the more popular version in my mind is Weird Al Yankovic's version. This should refresh your memory.

I am in no way making fun of or ripping on Drew. He is a friendly and intelligent kid who had the chance of a lifetime to compete on the show. A chance that 99.9999% of people don't get and an even smaller percentage of people win. (especially in the days of Ken Jennings)

The one thing I liked about Drew's appearance last night was he went down swinging. Drew was in a healthy position at the end of round one until Alex Trebek came back with a judge's ruling on Drew's pronunciation of pointillism. This deducted $2,000 from Drew's total, but he built his score back up in Double Jeopardy accumulating over $5,000.

And then came The Daily Double.

I had talked to Drew about his Daily Double strategy when we interviewed him in October. He said he would bet big if he felt comfortable with the category.

Drew, knowing if he was going to have any chance of catching the leader Karan, bet $5,000 to essentially double his score. It would have also put him in a better position to catch a wild card spot if he were to lose the round. But Drew got burned by "Tabasco." He then answered another question incorrectly putting him in the red at -$200 and out of Final Jeopardy.

I gotta hand it to Drew, as he watched the 30 minutes of his national appearance he was in good spirits, smiling and laughing through various parts of the show. And when it was all said and done as much as he probably didn't want to talk about it to a newspaper photographer, the 17-year-old sat down for an interview to talk about his experience.

An experience none of us will ever get.

So thank you Drew, and parents Mark and Cynthia, for being so gracious. At 15 teens selected a year for the Teen Tournament, I doubt I will have the chance to cover another local Jeopardy! contestant.

Register photo/JASON WERLING Drew Scheeler watches his final minutes on Teen Jeopardy! Wednesday night from a watch party at Quaker Steak and Lube in Sheffield. Scheeler lost in the quarterfinals as one of 15 contestants in this year's tournament.

Comments

Anonymous

Thu, 11/13/2008 - 11:34am

This article strikes just the right tone. I was also at the watch party and Drew was much more magnanimous in defeat than I ever could be. He is a very bright young man who got a rough draw and even worse "luck" in the categories. Is there anyone who thinks it strange that 2 categories were about geography when there was a world geography champion on the panel?